DIVA

With his impressive 1981 feature film DIVA, French director Jean-Jacques Beineix not only created an award-winning cult film but was responsible for the so-called ‘cinéma du look’ wave - a particular style of cinema who favoured a highly stylised look over realism. That said, there’s plenty of suspense in this tale of a young Parisian postman whose obsession with an American opera singer opens Pandora’s box…

Initially, there are various separate plotlines going on, with the main plot line concerning Jules (Frédéric Andréi), a young postman who delivers letters and parcels by means of riding around his designated areas on his moped. After one of his shifts has ended, he makes his way to an opera house (still in his postie uniform) to attend a concert by celebrated American soprano Cynthia Hawkins (the late Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez) - the diva of the film’s title. And a diva she is, for Cynthia steadfastly refuses to record her voice, preferring live concerts instead. During her performance of the aria “Ebben? Ne andró lontana” from Alfredo Catalani’s opera ‘La Wally’, Jules secretly records her singing (which is also the film’s opening scene) using a professional tape recorder. Unbeknownst to him, two rather iffy looking Taiwanese gentlemen sitting behind him witness Jules recording the aria and sure enough, it’s not the last we’ve seen of the pair… After the concert, Jules stands in a queue to have his programme autographed by Cynthia and engage in some small talk. While Cynthia is busy talking to other fans, Jules steals her gown (as you do) on the way out, which is hanging on a clothes rack.

The next day in a different part of town, undercover cop Paula (Anny Romand) sits outside a street café with a guy named Krantz (Jean-Jacques Moreau), a police informer recently released from prison. With the help of Krantz, Paula hopes to track Nadia (Chantal Deruaz), a prostitute and drug addict whom Krantz knows. Krantz knows that Nadia carries a recorded audio cassette with her with a testimony implicating the boss (who happened to be her former lover) of a drug- and prostitution ring operating in the Bois de Boulogne district of Paris. Paula hopes that by catching Nadia and the tape, she and her colleague Zapotek (Patrick Floersheim) finally find out the identity of the man masterminding the prostitution ring, especially as their boss, police commissioner Jean Saporta (Jacques Fabbri) is getting increasingly impatience about the entire case. Just as Nadia, obviously high on drugs, appears at the exit of a train station, two thugs in the employ of said crime boss, follow Nadia. They are the ‘Spic’ (Gérard Damon) and Le Curé (Dominique Pinon), a skinhead who looks the the French version of a National Front member. Nadia knows that the thugs follow her with the intent of kidnapping her and manages to let her cassette tape slide into the mailbag of Jules, whose moped happens to be parked at the pavement. Seconds later, the thugs grab Nadia and try to pull her into their car but she manages to escape, only to get bumped off by Curé, who throws an ice pick at her.

With Paula back at square one and Jules oblivious that he’s suddenly in possession of another tape, the heat is on. Spic and Curé eventually figure out what happened to the tape Nadia carried with her but they’re not alone, because Paula, re-tracing the events in her thoughts, also figures out that the tape must be in the possession of the postman. A short while later, Krantz is killed by Curé, also with an ice pick. At the same time, the two Taiwanese men also try to find Jules’ place or rather, his secret recording of the Cynthia Hawkins concert with the intention of blackmailing the singer once they get their greedy hands on the tape.

While doing his rounds, Jules makes the acquaintance of a young Vietnamese-French shoplifter called Alba (Thuy Ann Lu) and befriends her. In turn, she introduces him to her partner Serge Gorodish (Richard Bohringer), an eccentric bohemian who is into zen. The couple live in a huge room in a derelict warehouse as does Jules, only that his ‘apartment’, which belonged to a former artist into painting 1950s cars, soon gets ransacked. This is only the beginning of a string of increasingly violent and bizarre events which sees the life of Jules endangered as various parties are after one tape or another…

Cinematographer Phiippe Rousselot created the film’s stunning visuals, often dipped in blue hues, while Vladimir Cosma (apart from Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez) provided the soundtrack. Adapted from the name by Swiss author Daniel Odier, who wrote DIVA under the nom de plume Delacorta, the film is as much a feast for the senses as it is engaging due to its unusual plot device. Frédéric Andréi was pretty much unknown when he was cast as postman Jules and his performance is perfect, as he achieves the required balance of romantic-obsessiveness. Likewise, Dominique Pinon - these days a well-known face especially in the French films, was at the very beginning of his film career when DIVA was made and delivers a chilling performance as Curé, the skinhead killer who prefers listening to traditional French accordion music instead of punk tunes.

A gem which has stood the test of time, DIVA is now available on 4K UHD & Blu-ray format and looks more impressive than ever before!

Extras:
Blue as DIVA: Memories of a cult film / About the film by Denis Parent